scholarly journals Content matters: Measures of contextual diversity must consider semantic content

2022 ◽  
Vol 123 ◽  
pp. 104313
Author(s):  
Brendan T. Johns ◽  
Michael N. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Contextual Diversity

scholarly journals Content matters: Measures of contextual diversity must consider semantic content

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan Johns ◽  
Michael N. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Semantic Representations ◽  
Contextual Diversity ◽  
Unique Variance ◽  
Diversity Measures

Measures of contextual diversity seek to replace word frequency by counting the number of contexts in which a word occurs rather than the raw number of occurrences (Adelman, Brown, & Quesada, 2006). It has repeatedly been shown that contextual diversity measures outperform word frequency on word recognition datasets (Adelman & Brown, 2008; Brysbaert & New, 2009). Recently, Hollis (2020) has questioned the importance of contextual diversity by demonstrating that when other variables of contextual occurrences are controlled for, diversity accounts for relatively small amounts of unique variance over word frequency. However, the analysis of Hollis (2020) did not take into account the semantic content of the contexts that words occur in. Johns, Dye, and Jones (2020) and Johns (2021) have recently shown that defining linguistic contexts at larger, and more ecologically valid, levels lead to contextual diversity measures that provide very large improvements over word frequency, especially when implemented with principles from the Semantic Distinctiveness Model of Jones, Johns, and Recchia (2012). Across a series of simulations, we demonstrate that the advantages of contextual diversity measures are dependent upon the usage of semantic representations of words to determine the uniqueness of contextual occurrences, where unique contextual occurrences provide a greater impact to a word’s lexical strength than redundant contextual occurrences.

A Longitudinal Posthumous Study of Letter Writing in a Late Elderly Case

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-33
Author(s):  
Angel Ball ◽  
Jean Neils-Strunjas ◽  
Kate Krival
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Elderly Woman ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Cognitive Status ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
Linguistic Performance ◽  
Errors Analysis ◽  
Normal Status

This study is a posthumous longitudinal study of consecutive letters written by an elderly woman from age 89 to 93. Findings reveal a consistent linguistic performance during the first 3 years, supporting “normal” status for late elderly writing. She produced clearly written cursive form, intact semantic content, and minimal spelling and stroke errors. A decline in writing was observed in the last 6–9 months of the study and an analysis revealed production of clausal fragmentation, decreasing semantic clarity, and a higher frequency of spelling, semantic, and stroke errors. Analysis of writing samples can be a valuable tool in documenting a change in cognitive status differentiated from normal late aging.

A Developmental Study of Intonation Recognition

1968 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 825-832 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn M. Corlew
Keyword(s):  
Significant Interaction ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Choice Test ◽  
Developmental Study ◽  
Multiple Choice Test ◽  
The Third ◽  
Matching Test ◽  
Better Than

Two experiments investigated the information conveyed by intonation from speaker to listener. A multiple-choice test was devised to test the ability of 48 adults to recognize and label intonation when it was separated from all other meaning. Nine intonation contours whose labels were most agreed upon by adults were each matched with two English sentences (one with appropriate and one with inappropriate intonation and semantic content) to make a matching-test for children. The matching-test was tape-recorded and given to children in the first, third, and fifth grades (32 subjects in each grade). The first-grade children matched the intonations with significantly greater agreement than chance; but they agreed upon significantly fewer sentences than either the third or fifth graders. Some intonation contours were matched with significantly greater frequency than others. The performance of the girls was better than that of the boys on an impatient question and a simple command which indicates that there was a significant interaction between sex and intonation.

Semantic Conflict Processing in the Color-Word Stroop and the Emotional Stroop

2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 149-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Montserrat Zurrón ◽  
Marta Ramos-Goicoa ◽  
Fernando Díaz
Keyword(s):  
Stroop Task ◽  
Color Word ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Emotional Stroop ◽  
Semantic Equivalence ◽  
Incongruent Color ◽  
Semantic Conflict ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Temporal Locus

With the aim of establishing the temporal locus of the semantic conflict in color-word Stroop and emotional Stroop phenomena, we analyzed the Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) elicited by nonwords, incongruent and congruent color words, colored words with positive and negative emotional valence, and colored words with neutral valence. The incongruent, positive, negative, and neutral stimuli produced interference in the behavioral response to the color of the stimuli. The P150/N170 amplitude was sensitive to the semantic equivalence of both dimensions of the congruent color words. The P3b amplitude was smaller in response to incongruent color words and to positive, negative, and neutral colored words than in response to the congruent color words and colored nonwords. There were no differences in the ERPs induced in response to colored words with positive, negative, and neutral valence. Therefore, the P3b amplitude was sensitive to interference from the semantic content of the incongruent, positive, negative, and neutral words in the color-response task, independently of the emotional content of the colored words. In addition, the P3b amplitude was smaller in response to colored words with positive, negative, and neutral valence than in response to the incongruent color words. Overall, these data indicate that the temporal locus of the semantic conflict generated by the incongruent color words (in the color-word Stroop task) and by colored words with positive, negative, and neutral valence (in the emotional Stroop task) appears to occur in the range 300–450 ms post-stimulus.

On the Semantic Content of Grammatical Gender and Its Impact on the Representation of Human Referents

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 367-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Irmen ◽  
Julia Kurovskaja
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Differential Effects ◽  
Gender Information ◽  
Masculine Role ◽  
Feminine Role ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
Open Question

Grammatical gender has been shown to provide natural gender information about human referents. However, due to formal and conceptual differences between masculine and feminine forms, it remains an open question whether these gender categories influence the processing of person information to the same degree. Experiment 1 compared the semantic content of masculine and feminine grammatical gender by combining masculine and feminine role names with either gender congruent or incongruent referents (e.g., Dieser Lehrer [masc.]/Diese Lehrerin [fem.] ist mein Mann/meine Frau; This teacher is my husband/my wife). Participants rated sentences in terms of correctness and customariness. In Experiment 2, in addition to ratings reading times were recorded to assess processing more directly. Both experiments were run in German. Sentences with grammatically feminine role names and gender incongruent referents were rated as less correct and less customary than those with masculine forms and incongruent referents. Combining a masculine role name with an incongruent referent slowed down reading to a greater extent than combining a feminine role name with an incongruent referent. Results thus specify the differential effects of masculine and feminine grammatical gender in denoting human referents.

Electrophysiological Correlates of Contextual Diversity in Word Recognition

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Vergara-Martinez ◽  
Montserrat Comesana ◽  
Eva Gutierrez ◽  
Manuel Perea
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Contextual Diversity

Infusions and Fumigations

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 115-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Wilkens
Keyword(s):  
Ideal Point ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Social Acceptability ◽  
Medical Procedure ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
Point Of Entry ◽  
Linguistic Model ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Different Types

Written texts, especially sacred texts, can be handled in different ways. They can be read for semantic content; or they can be materially experienced, touched, or even be inhaled or drunk. I argue that literacy ideologies regulate social acceptability of specific semantic and somatic text practices. Drinking or fumigating the Qurʾan as a medical procedure is a highly contested literacy event in which two different ideologies are drawn upon simultaneously. I employ the linguistic model of codeswitching to highlight central aspects of this event: a more somatic ideology of literacy enables the link to medicine, while a more semantic ideology connects the practice to theological discourses on the sacredness of the Qurʾan as well as to the tradition of Prophetic medicine. Opposition to and ridicule of the practice, however, comes from representatives of an ideology of semantic purity, including some Islamic theologians and most Western scholars of Islam. Qurʾanic potions thus constitute an ideal point of entry for analyzing different types of literacy ideologies being followed in religious traditions.

Semi-supervised Multi-task Network For Image Aesthetic Assessment

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (8) ◽  
pp. 188-1-188-7
Author(s):  
Xiaoyu Xiang ◽  
Yang Cheng ◽  
Jianhang Chen ◽  
Qian Lin ◽  
Jan Allebach
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Training Data ◽  
Score Distribution ◽  
Generalization Ability ◽  
Subjective Preference ◽  
Ranking Tasks

Image aesthetic assessment has always been regarded as a challenging task because of the variability of subjective preference. Besides, the assessment of a photo is also related to its style, semantic content, etc. Conventionally, the estimations of aesthetic score and style for an image are treated as separate problems. In this paper, we explore the inter-relatedness between the aesthetics and image style, and design a neural network that can jointly categorize image by styles and give an aesthetic score distribution. To this end, we propose a multi-task network (MTNet) with an aesthetic column serving as a score predictor and a style column serving as a style classifier. The angular-softmax loss is applied in training primary style classifiers to maximize the margin among classes in single-label training data; the semi-supervised method is applied to improve the network’s generalization ability iteratively. We combine the regression loss and classification loss in training aesthetic score. Experiments on the AVA dataset show the superiority of our network in both image attributes classification and aesthetic ranking tasks.

Examining the episodic-semantic interplay during future thinking – A reanalysis of external details

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cherie Strikwerda-Brown ◽  
John Hodges ◽  
Olivier Piguet ◽  
Muireann Irish
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Structural Mri ◽  
Future Thinking ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Differential Vulnerability ◽  
Clinical Disorders ◽  
External Component ◽  
Future Narratives ◽  
General Semantic

Traditional analyses of autobiographical construction have tended to focus on the ‘internal’ or episodic details of the narrative. Contemporary studies employing fine-grained scoring measures, however, reveal the ‘external’ component of autobiographical narratives to contain important information relevant to the individual’s life story. Here, we used the recently developed NExt scoring protocol to explore profiles of external details generated by patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) (n = 11) and semantic dementia (SD) (n = 13) on a future thinking task. Voxel-based morphometry analyses of structural MRI were used to determine the neural correlates of external detail profiles in each patient group. Overall, distinct NExt profiles were observed across past and future temporal contexts in AD and SD groups, which involved elevations in external details, in the context of reduced internal details, relative to healthy Controls. Specifically, AD patients provided significantly more General Semantic details compared with Controls during past retrieval, whereas Specific Episode external details were elevated during future simulation. These increased external details within future narratives related to grey matter integrity in medial and lateral frontal regions in AD. By contrast, SD patients displayed an elevation of Specific Episode, Extended Episode, and General Semantic details exclusively during future simulation relative to Controls, which related to integrity of medial and lateral parietal regions. Our findings suggest that the compensatory external details generated during future simulation comprise an array of episodic and semantic details that vary in terms of specificity and self-relevance. Moreover, these profiles appear to be differentially affected depending on the locus of underlying neuropathology in dementia. Adopting a fine-grained approach to external details provides important information regarding the interplay between episodic and semantic content during future stimulation and highlights the differential vulnerability and preservation of distinct components of the constructed narrative in clinical disorders.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document